CALIFORNIA SIERRAS 
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DGAR. PAYWE 























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_ EDGAR ALWIN PAYNE 
ae : and His Work 











EDGAR ALWIN PAYNE 
And His Work 


With Articles by: 


ANTONY ANDERSON 
Art Critic of the West 


FRED SPHOGUE 
Chief Editorial Writer L. A. Times 


he 2G 


Published by 
STENDAHL ART GALLERIES 
The Ambassador Hotel 
Bos Angeles Calitornina 





Limited | Edition 
No. 
360 





Photographs by George E. Hurrell ‘ 
Claude S. Turner 


j 


Color Jacket by 
Commercial Art and Engraving Co. 


Halftones by Southern Engraving Co. 





PRINTED IN U.S.A. 





* 
\@ 


Press of Phillips Printing Company, Lo 


List of Illustrations 


1—‘Chateau at Montresor”’ 

2—** Low Tide”’ 

3d— ‘Rugged Slopes and Tamaracks 
4—*A Brittany Harbor’’ 

o—* The Open Sea’’ 

6—‘A Rugged Peak”’ 

7—‘Sierra Crags’’ 


ve 


8—* Boats at Sottomarino’’ 
9— ‘The Wetterhorn’”’ 
10—‘ Drying Sails”’ 
1I—* The Matterhorn’”’ 
12— Tranquility’’ 
13—‘‘ Boats of Camaret’’ 
14—‘‘Solitude’s Enchantment”’ 
15—‘ Boats at Chioggia”’ 
16—‘‘ Lake Lucerne’’ 
17—‘‘ Laguna Coast”’ 
18—‘ The Rugged Alps’”’ 
19—‘The Engelberg Valley’’ 
20—" Loading Bait’’ 
21—** Peak of St. Gervais’’ 
22—‘ Boats Off Shore’’ 
23—‘'The Great White Peak’’ 
24—** The Water Front’’ 
25—** Fishermen of Concarneau’’ 


26—* Rugged Heights”’ 
27—‘ Fishermen’s Holiday ’”’ 
28—‘‘ Mont Blane Range’’ 
29— Sails of Chioggia”’ 
30—** Peaks of Tonnay’’ 

~ 31—*Sunlit Peak’’ 

32—‘ Boats of Douarnenez’’ 
33—*A Busy Port’’ 

34—‘‘ Kast Wind”’ 

30—* Wooded Slopes’’ 
26— ‘Outward Bound’’ 

37— ‘Sand Boats’’ 

38—* Becalmed’’ 

39— ‘Italian Boats No. 10.’’ 
40—‘ Shadowed Slopes’’ 
41—*‘A Big Pine Lake”’ 
42—‘* Fishermen’s Harbor’’ 
43—‘ French Boats’’ 

44—‘* Fishing Fleet’’ 

45—‘‘ Peaks and Shadows’’ 
46—‘ Brittany Boats’’ 

47—‘ Evening’”’ 

48—‘‘ View at Murren’’ 
49—** The Return’’ 

50—* Making Port”’ 

51—‘‘ Model of French Tuna Boat’’ 





EDGAR ALWIN PAYNE 


A Biography and an Appreciation 





By ANTONY ANDERSON 

Edgar Alwin Payne is an American landscape 
painter whose outstanding qualities as both tech- 
nician and interpreter have been proclaimed by well- 
known critics in Paris and New York, a high esti- 
mate that is verified in his own exhibitions. Los An- 
geles, too, and Chicago, have declared him to be one 
e ihe Blech Pibart Exactly four years ago, when he 
was showing in the same gallery that he has chosen 
for his present exhibit, I wrote of him in the Los An- 
eeles Times: 

‘*Payne sees nature 1n a big and comprehensive 
way, and something of this bigness of outlook he com- 
municates to us. Which is, when all is said, one of 
the chief functions of art. You will find poetry and 
beauty in the pictures at the Stendahl, and a vitality 
that 1s amazing.’’ 

Poetry and beauty, and the power to express 
them, have come out of Missouri, where Payne was 
born, as they have come out of Maine, or Ohio, or 
California, and as they will continue to come so long 
as the human spirit feels the need of the consecra- 
tion and the dream. ‘The poet and the painter began 
to sip the manna of beauty on the day of birth—the 
honey-dew that may be distilled anywhere and every- 
where, from lowland levels to Olympian slopes. 

None the less at the tender age of fourteen the 
sturdy and independent Edgar Alwin shook the dust 
of Washburn, Missouri, from his feet forever,—the 
dust that was mixed so unpteasingly with the honey- 
dew,—traveling first to the Ozarks in Arkansas, but 
soon finding these as dusty as the narrow streets of 


PAYNE eight 


Washburn. So he turned his face southward ane 
went to Old Mexico. 

_Why do very young artists leave home? For a 
hundred reasons. In Payne’s case it was because, 
having exhausted the possibilities of pokeberry juice 
in the making of pictures, he had joyfully pounced 
on a few pots of paint belonging to his father—and 
been found out. There was some disagreement. 
Ar gument failed to clear the atmosphere. Edgar Al- 
win’s father refused to recognize his son’s first mas- 
terpiece. So the lad turned his eager eyes towards 
the mountains, the low-lying Ozarks, delicately blue 
and very lovely on the horizon. It may be, too, that 
the wanderlust was already awake and alert to all 
the allurements of glorious adventure. Certain it 1s 
that Payne has traveled much and in many coun- 
tries since that day so big with fate. 

He found plenty of adventure at once,—Old 
Mexico is full of it,—and after the proper interval 
and the customary quota of hard knocks, he also 
found fame, which is not good for the very young 
and the very inexperienced. California beckoned 
and offered him that. For, though Payne began as 
a portraitist and a muralist, landscape had always 
held his secret and loyal allegiance, and in 1911 he 
met with his true affinity, California landscape—its 
mountains, its foothills, its rocky Pacific shores. 
After 1911, still a seeker, still an adventurous wan- 
derer, he was irresistibly drawn to California again 
and again, and for the past six or seven years his 
home and studio have been in either Los Angeles or 
Laguna Beach. 

Payne studied for a short time in the Chicago 
Art Institute, but, hke so many other men of strong 
and original talent, he did not feel at home in an art 
school. He needed elbow room, a place in which to 


nine PAYNE 


dream, to think and to work in his own way. He 
turned to murals,—plenty of room there,—for his 
decorative sense has always been very strong, a de- 
cided factor even in his easel pictures. Many of these 
murals were painted in Kansas City, New York and 
Chicago, and placed in those cities, but it was in Cali- 
fornia that he painted his magnum opus, 26000 
square yards of decorated canvas for eleven floors 
of the Congress Hotel in Chicago, the subjects being 
entirely Itahan—though Payne had not been in Italv 
at that time. But youth is always imaginative and 
venturesome, even undismayed by 67,000 pounds of 
lead. However, there were other courageous youths 
on this immense job, Conrad Buff, Jack Wilkinson 
Smith and Grayson Sayre—in whom you recognize 
names that have since become some of the best-known 
in the art of California. 

On his first trip to the West, Payne met, in San 
Francisco, Elsie Palmer, a young art student whom 
he subsequently wooed and wed in Chicago. The 
wedding took place in 1912. Exactly ten years later 
Payne, with his wife and daughter, made the longest 
painting trip of his career, for it lasted two year's 
and brought him, in the course of the first year, 
through eastern France, along the French and 
Itahan Riviera, to Rome and around Rome, into 
Venice and the Adriatic, through Switzerland and 
the Bernese Alps. 

He was painting fast and furiously all the time, 
for once again he had come upon his strongest affin- 
ity in art. The Swiss Alps are much like the High 
Sierras, though bolder, more rugged, more densely 
blanketed in snow and fringed with evergreens, more 
strung with happy villages. Then Payne rested for 
the winter in Paris, holding a very successful exhi- 
bition of sixteen canvases at the Galeries Jacques 


PeAty NLR cen 


Seligmann, 57 Rue St. Dominique. He also exhib- 
ited in the spring Salon, his picture bringing him an 
honorable mention. 

The second year of his sketching tour found him 
in the chateau country of France, along the banks of 
the Loire, and here Elsie Palmer Payne also painted, 
her medium being water color. They sketched along 
the entire coast of Brittany from the Loire to Mont 
St. Michel, though much of their time was spent in 
lower Brittany, in the picturesque fishing ports of 
Concarneau and Douarnenez. What an itinerary for 
a painter! That Edgar Payne, ever alert, ever 
eagerly looking for the ‘“‘picture,’’ neglected no 
single item of this beauty on the way, his exhibition 
at the Stendahl amply proves. What industry, and 
what talent! 

But mere industry and technical talent, how- 
ever persistent, do not paint pictures that live. To 
these attributes must be joined the image-making 
faculty, the power to see with the soul as well as with 
the eye. Payne has been dowered with this gift to a 
marked degree. His stupendous mountain forms are 
not imitations of nature, they are interpretations, 
and they assume the vitality of pictures through the 
passion of a painter who also happens to be a poet. 
They are created, nothing less, from the elements of 
art,—how few these elements are, and yet how dyna- 
mic, how infinitely varied in their outward manifes- 
tations! 

It would seem that none of their variations has 
escaped Payne’s creative curiosity. Descending 
from the mountains, he is equally keen-eyed in the 
valleys and along the sea levels. So it happens that 
the exhibition of paintings now held by him, the out- 
put of more than two years of hard and joyous work 
with the brush, is as replete with diversities in form 


eleven PAYNE 


as it is rich in color. It is the full and determinate 
expression of many moods, though its one recurrent 
theme, its lect-motif, is beauty. We may rightly call 
the present exhibition a painter’s symphony, OTe 
holds all of life as Payne sees and feels it through 
the medium of art. We know—the pictures tell us— 
that he sees clearly and feels deeply. 

Public honors have come to him, of course, 
though he has not sought them. He has been too 
happily absorbed in looking for and proclaiming the 
haunting beauty of this visible and invisible world 
to grasp at the bubble reputation. But public recog- 
nition is good 1n its way, though not the highest good 
to the artist,—who must always find that in himself, 
in the satisfaction of work well done, the vision real- 
ized,—and such recognition has been Edgar Payne’s 
from the very beginning of his career. Much more 
will follow, we may be sure. 

His Salon honor of 1923 has been spoken of. The 
Chicago Art Institute has given him the Martin B. 
Kahn prize. From the Los Angeles Museum he has 
received gold and bronze medals, from exhibitions 
held in Sacramento gold and silver medals, from the 
Southwest Museum of Los Angeles a first prize. He 
is represented in the permanent collection of the 
John Herron Art Institute of Indianapolis, in the 
Chicago Municipal Collection, in the Southwest 
Museum of Los Angeles, 1n the Peoria Art League, 
and in the galleries of the University of Nebraska. 
Many private collections have been enriched by his 
noble Californian and European landscapes, for the 
understanding love for native American art has not 
been slow to discover and appraise a talent so power- 
ful and so individual. 

Descriptions accompanying ae) 
ductions by Antony Anderson 


Edear Alwin Payne and His Art 


by rep S. Hocue 





Edgar Alwin Payne has painted as Homer sang 
wandering from place to place where his fancy 
moved him. He is the rolling stone, the floating 
cloud, the vagrant bee. Wherever there is warmth 
and variety in color, a contrast of plastic and static 
form—wherever nature has unfolded one of its di- 
vine masterpieces Payne has made a pilgrimage, as 
the faithful to a shrine; and he writes on canvas with 
pigments his symphonies as Homer sang them to the 
tune of his lyre. 

Had he been born in Arabia ten centuries ago 
he would have been one of the priests of the fire 
worshipers. He would have been at home among the 
Druids of ancient Brittany. Born.in a century im- 
mersed in materialism, he has broken the fetters of 
conventionalism, he has fled the mean and the sordid 
and has gone forth to hold solitary communion with 
the mountains and the sea. 

In all history of landscape painting, there is no 
painter who would travel further or surmount more 
obstacles to view nature’s masterpieces and very few 
who would bring together in a single collection ean- 
vases from so many parts of America and Europe. 

And, like Homer, many communities claim him 
as their own. The dwellers of Southern Missouri 
have a higher appreciation of the rocky summits and 
wooded slopes of the Ozarks since they have seen 
them on canvas as Edgar Payne visualizes them. 
Thousands of tourists he made a pilgrimage to the 
California and Mexican Sierras to find those moun- 
tain lakes, so rich in color and shadow, whose secrets 
hidden in their depths are never disclosed, so placid 


thirteen PAYNE 


and yet too treacherous—those slumbering pools that 
Payne has painted as no other artist, living or dead, 
has painted them. 

On the coasts of Brittany there are communities 
that preserve as choice treasures sketches of the tuna 
and the mackerel fleets that furnish the motif for his 
witching, colorful canvases of the fishing craft on the 
coast of Brittany. Artists are no novelty on the 
coasts of Brittany south of Brest. But this quiet and 
affable American was different. He came with his 
wife and daughter and lived for a season among 
them. He went forth in the gray dawn on a fishing 
cutter and was one with the crew. While they fished 
on the banks he sketched; and he was not averse to 
lending a hand when the nets were drawn in. 

But Payne was to them a child of fortune, fav- 
ored by destiny. He possessed a spark of the sacred 
fire that, for want of a better term, we call genius. 
The rushing tides, the swelling sails, the dash of the 
spray on the prow of the swiftly moving cutter, the 
opal cloud that sauntered across the blue arch above 
them, the purple and gold of the horizon—all these 
lived again in color, light and shade on the canvas 
illuminated and glorified by his brush. He alone 
possessed the art of expressing on canvas the emo- 
tions and the impressions that they all experienced 
in their daily converse with the sea. 

But Payne could be chained to no single loca- 
tion. He was as restless as the Wandering Jew. 
From Brittany he soared as on the wings of the 
morning to the Swiss Alps. He descended to earth 
at Interlaken and became the companion of the 
Alpine guides, not for a few days but for whole sea- 
sons. He painted the Jungfrau, the Matterhorn, the 
Higer, the Monch and some of the peaks of lesser 
fame, but of still greater beauty—painted them in 


3] 
PAYNE fourteen 


their changing moods, painted canvases whose en- 
durance is only second to that of these eternal bar- 
riers. 

For an American artist to paint a Swiss moun- 
tain is not new, but the art of Edgar Payne soars 
high above mere decorative effects. Those rugged 
Swiss mountains on his canvases are studies in arehi- 
tecture, and in geology. There is nothing superficial 
about his art. His youth and years of production 
have been spent in communion with nature. Geol- 
ogists have marveled that they could classify every 
strata on his canvases. A boulder on the mountain 
side was not to him merely a mass of stone. He 
searched the secret of its origin. His delineation of 
the rock was that of a portraitist. 

One of the marvels to me of his art is correct 
reproduction of atmosphere. fle has painted in 
Southern California, in France, in Switzerland and 
in Italy. But he never confuses his climatic tones, a 
defect of almost every artist that has wandered far 
afield. How often have I seen a Southern California 
landscape under a sky of New England or the North 
Sea! I am sure no living landscape artist possesses 
a sharper and truer perception than Edgar Payne. 

Switzerland charmed him, the call of the sea was 
not to be resisted. I can follow him in his canvases 
from Lake Lucerne through the French Alps to the 
canals of Venice. But the stagnant waters repelled 
him and he was soon cruising with the fishing fleet on 
the Adriatic. The scroll of the centuries rolled back 
and he was in the midst of the flotillas that left the 
port of Tyre when Nineveh and Babylon were the 
wonder cities of the oriental world, when the Queen 
of Sheba came to view the Temple of Solomon. 

It is from these canvases that I learned the sail- 


fifteen PAYNE 


ing crait of the Adriatic differ little from that of 
the eras of Biblical history. 

From the Adriatic he cruised into the Mediter- 
ranean, to bask in the sunlight of the French and 
Itahan Riviera. One senses this change by the dif- 
ferent prows, sail and rigging of the ree cutters. 
The fishing craft on the Mediter ranean Canvases are 
those of ancient Egypt; and one marvels how that 
distinction has been preserved through the centuries. 
The fleet of Xerxes is replaced by that of the Phar- 
aohs. 

These canvases which Edgar Payne has brought 
back from Southern Europe will assure his reputa- 
tion as a marine painter. None has delved deeper 
than he into the sea and its mysteries. Whether it 
be the mountain lake, the Atlantic off the coast of 
Brittany, the harbors of the French and Italian 
coasts, the shoreless expanse of waters of the Adriatic 
and the Mediterranean, or the moving tides off the 
shores of Southern California, Edgar Payne has 
caught them in their secret moods and reproduced 
them on his canvases. 

As I studied the canvases in the present collec- 
tion, I sensed a feeling of regret that he should have 
wandered so far. I wished he might have been im- 
prisoned in California, like a bird in a golden cage, 
that he might have remained as loyal to us as the 
Flemish painters to the Low Countries and the 
British painters of the epoch of Gainsborough and 
Lawrence to the British Isles. But I appreciated 
that it would have been to clip the wings of his in- 
spiration, to fetter his genius with a golden chain. 

The art of Edgar Payne is cosmopolitan, unt- 
versal. No State can claim him as his own. He is 
the floating cloud, wafted by the winds of caprice— 
perhaps of destiny. He is a minstrel painter, wel- 


PAYNE sixteen 


come wherever his fancy leads him, and his canvases 
form a necklace of pearls that encircle half the globe. 

He is young in years to win the appellation of 
master; and that appellation consists of the awards 
his canvases have won in every country and every 
exhibition where his canvases have appeared. ‘The 
art critics of Paris and Rome are even more enthusi- 
astic in their appreciation of his creations than those 
of his native country. Just as Thomas Payne said 
that he was a citizen of the world, Edgar Payne can 
say that he possesses a habitat in the art world of 
two continents. 





POW ARD ALWIN PAYNE WORKING IN HIS PARIS STUDIO 
ON THE CANVAS THAT WON FOR HIM “HONORABLE MEN- 
Mie veo Ge SALON OF 1923. 


seventeen PAYNE 





Number 1 “CHATEAU AT MONIES. 


This beautiful picture, glowing with subdued 
color, was painted near Tours. The chateau dates 
from the fourteenth century, and is still occupied by 
a Polish family descended from its original builder. 
With its rounded peaked towers it is like the castle 
of the enchanted princess of the fairy story. At its 
feet are the village shops, green and yellow, with red 
roofs. Though this is an almost literal transcription, 
the artist has massed his buildings and trees, and 
played with his colors so subtly, that the glamour of 
romance transfigures the scene. 


PAYNE eighteen 





Number 2 TEL OVALE DE 


Concarneau again, that wonderful Breton fish- 
ing town seven mites from Port Aven. The color ar- 
rangement is one of blues, greens and reds, all at 
their most brilliant, though here skilfully tuned into 
vibrant harmony by the artist. The bright colors 
are those of the hulls propped wp in the low-tide. 
More subdued in tone are the hues of the sails, dull 
purples and extremely light tawny yellows. Beyond 
the boats is the encircling town of Concarneau. 


nineteen PAYNE 





Number 3 “RUGGED SLOPES AND TAMAR 


Awarded Martin B. Kahn prize, Art Institute, 
Chicago. An ideal conception of our own high 
Srerras. The towering saw-tooth peaks reach far 
into a pale transparent sky. Delicate shadows of gray 
blue with warmer lights of a sunny day spread over 
slopes that are interlaced with patches of late snow 
that reach from the placid lake below to the topmost 
peak beyond. The foreground portal is flanked by 
stately pines and a carpet of gray-green grass is there 
for us to tread upon as we enter and view the 
grandeur beyond. 


PAYNE twenty 





Number 4 SA BRITTANY HARBOR” 


This canvas reveals the Breton Coast at its best. 
Here at anchor and in brilliant array are the fishing 
smacks of the Finisterre Coast, their brightly color- 
ed sails drooping in the late afternoon light and laz- 
ily casting their subdued counterpart in the blue and 
green water of a Brittany harbor. Here are color and 
vigor that appeal not only to the technician but to 
the layman as well. It is a canvas that attracts and 
holds the attention. 


twenty-one PAYNE 





Number 5 “THE OPEN SEA” 


The sea outside the Breton coast is the bluest in 
the world, and the merriest—so Edgar Payne tells us 
in this breezy canvas, which is full of movement and 
beauty, and which was painted with the spontaneous 
freedom of the subject itself. The hull of the proud 
oncoming hunter of tuna ris even bluer than the waves 
it cleaves so superbly, and its sails show a flaunting 
brick-red against the wall of hurrying clouds. A 
picture of amazing vitality and enduring charm, with 
a joyously vibrant lyrical note. 


POA NCE twenty-two 





se 


Number 6 “A RUGGED PEAK’ 


Like all famous mountain peaks, Wellhorn, 
buffeted by winds and mists, scourged by tempests, 
threatened by lightnings, always emerges in great 
serenity from its rough experiences—which are, 
after all, only brief and temporary. The most of its 
days are passed in smiling peace, and after severe 
storms these seem more elysian than ever before. The 
artist has here come upon Wellhorn on such a day— 
its color old-rose, its head crowned with snow under 
a grayish-yellow sky. The immense shadow on its 
precipitous slopes is blue and delicately transparent. 
A picture as beautiful as it is noble and impressive. 


twenty-three PAYNE 





Number 7 “SIERRA CRAGS” 


Painted at Pine Lake, this rendering of trem- 
endous mountain forms makes for a composition of 
imposing and compelling power. The crags, rising 
to sheer heights, and wrapped in the shadows of 
morning, tneffably ethereal and lovely, place them- 
selves as a blue wall against the greensh-blue sky. 
The snow is spread like a white scarf along the crags. 
Summit Lake, tamaracks grouped around it, hes 
asleep in the foreground. 


Pay NE twenty-four 





Number 8 BOALS Al “SOTTO. MARKING” 


Presumably the red and tawny sails of the 
Venetian cargo boats do not always flaunt them- 
selves in the sun. But when they do, Edgar Payne’s 
eye and brush are in swift pursuit. An impression- 
istic colorist, he has no taste for bare masts. So here 
we come upon rectangular sails against a greenish 
sky and the tawny buildings of Sotto Marino. Below 
the brilliant hulls of the boats are undulating green 
waters. The lines of the composition are simple and 
powerful. 


twenty-five PAYNE 





Number 9 “THE WETTELRAORN. 


Wonderfully green are the slopes of the Wetter- 
horn as they shine and sparkle in the clear, cold ar 
of the sunlit Swiss Alpine range. Wonderful and 
magnificent are their bold contours, and beautiful 
are their vast shadowed walls, blue shot with rose. 
Payne, painter of mountains, was not dismayed even 
by all this almost unpaintable grandeur, and he has 
given us a picture that is as magnificent as his model 
—a striking portrait in profile, so to speak. 


PAYNE twenty-six 





Number 10 “DRYIN GISALLS = 


After the driving mists of the sea comes the 
beneficent sun to the heavy cargo boats of the Adri- 
atic. Then they spread their sails of a light brick- 
red and yellow till they flutter in the breeze like the 
wings of butterflies. Then they float like gulls on 
the transparent blue of the bay. Then the changing 
rose of their sails is repeated in the fleeting rose of 
the horizon. And then the painter from California 
sees them and is happy, for he has found a picture 
for his portfolio. The loveliness of the moment ts 
recorded for all time, it is yours and mine no less 
than the artist’s. 


twenty-seven PAYNE 





Number 11 “THE MATTERHORN 


Another Alpine scene of overwhelming impres- 
siveness and grandeur in a brushwork whose par- 
ticular virility of touch is native to Edgar Payne. 
The great mountain shows its fine silhouette against 
a sky delicately greenish in tone, its highest point 
wreathed ina nimbus of ever-changing yet ever-last- 
ing cloud forms. At the mountain’s base the snow 
hes like a plateau whose upper edge melts from white 
into the perennial green of trees. This approach to 
the Matterhorn was reached by the artist on the 
train that runs to Gornergrat. 


PAYNE - twenty-eight 








a 


Number 12 SLRANOOTILEDEY: 


Tuna boats in the background, larger than the 
sardine smacks, though not more effective for the 
purposes of the picture-maker. Their hoisted sails 
have been painted and tinted and bleached by their 
owners, as well as by the sun and the wind, and their 
hulls have been striped with bright greens, quite as if 
the eager artist from America had given his orders 
a year or two ahead of his coming. But things have 
a habit of working that way for artists. They ar- 
range themselves to swt his needs—and when they 
don’t, he arranges them himself. We may be sure 
that Payne manipulated his ingredients very skill- 
fully when he painted this fine picture. 


twenty-nine PAYNE 








Number 13 “BOATS OF CAMAKRET 


Camaret is across the bay from Brest. Her land- 
locked shore harbors many smacks, both large and 
small. Here rest the tuna fishermen alongside their 
brown-sailed sisters that hunt the prosace sardine and 
mackerel. A well-balanced composition, with an ex- 
cellent and pleasing arrangement of dark and light 
masses, the repose and tranquillity of the entire scene 
is reminiscent of, and is the locale of the romance of 
Pierre Lott. 


PAYNE thirty 





Number 14 POOL UDEV CHANTILEN I” 


The necromancy of noonday light holds a fasci- 
nation for the landscape painter that he cannot 
escape. He is forever trying to perform the same 
magic on canvas. Sometimes he succeeds. Payne’s 
success with “Sohtude’s Enchantment ”’ is amazing. 
Here is nature—here is light—seen through a tem- 
perament. Itis an art of the highest. The mountain 
wall shows amethyst of a crystal clarity. The lower 
chiffs are gray-pink with sunlight. The vivid green 
of trees and grass makes the entire canvas sparkle 
imlight. Inthe Alvah G. Strong collection. 


thirty-one PAYING 





Number 15 “BOATS AT CHI@g Gia 


It must be that the sails of the Adriatic have 
given the name to that seductive color known as [tal- 
tan pink, which is at once pink and rose and yellow, 
and yet not quite any of these. The larger bellying 
sail in this charming picture is of the true Itahan 
pink, and holds tawny yellow patches like emblems. 
The smaller sail is a delicious yellow. An overarch- 
ing blue sky vibrates with touches of the same elusive 
color—pink, rose, yellow, what you will—and the 
waters of the bay reflect it in an interplay of broken 
segments. 


PAYNE thirty-two 





Number 16 STAKE LUCERNE. 


One of the most striking paintings in a collection 
rich in striking canvases. Also one of the finest tech- 
meally. A dreamy afternoon, the light softened by 
a tender and impalpable haze. The contours of the 
dominating mountam are ser enely majestic, its shad- 
ows are delicately blue, merging into rose-gray. Con- 
tours and shadows, as well as stately rows of red- 
roofed villas and a sky of palest blue, are all reflected 
in the beautiful green of the placid Lucerne, so rich 
in legend, song and story. No poem on Lake Lucerne 
ever held more haunting cadences than the lines and 
colors of this picture. 


thirty-three PAYNE 





Number 17 “LAGUNA COAST” 


Here is Laguna in her happiest mood. The 
sparkling blue-green sea, pounding at cliffs of golden 
brown lit by the sinking sun, all the colors are here, 
fresh and vivid. 


PAYNE thirty-four 





Number 18 Ee tiieGh DD ALP SS 


Here we have a very lovely scheme of gray-blues 
and deeper blues holding delicate suggestions of am- 
ethyst. The mountans are modeled with all the di- 
rectness and power that the subject demands. The 
blue foreground shadow suggests, for all its trans- 
parency, the structural solidity of a wall of lapis- 
lazuli. Above this grandeur of blues the sky enfolds 
the mountains like a veil of pale gray-green, and the 
soaring peaks themselves eae gray-pink in the early 
morning light. 


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Number 19 “THE ENGELBERG GALLEY. 


The Kngelberg Valley in Switzerland, not far 
from Lake Lucerne, offered the artist many pictorial 
opportunities. All he had to do was to pick up his 
brush, turn arownd three times, and lift wp his eyes 
toward the mountains, which were everywhere. This 
was not exactly his procedure, perhaps, when he 
painted the beautiful picture before us, for it has 
compositional strength and coherence as well as per- 
fect color harmony. The scheme is one of delicate 
light blues commingled with equally delicate grays, 
contrasted with a foreground of lvely green. 


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Number 20 ELOADING BAI ie 


A subject painted in an exquisite tonality, the 
prevailing note being the dull red in the sails of the 
fishing boats, which is carried out in the duller reds 
and accented by the dull yellows of the shadowed 
quay. The green of the bay is also kept low in key, 
the tide having the slow movement of oil in the almost 
breathless ar. The busy fishermen give the touch of 
sympathetic intimacy to this everyday scene at Con- 
carneau. 


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+ Menge™ 





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: € 





Number 21 “PEAKS AF Sf... Gi 


The warm grayish-pink of the sculptured walls 
of St. Gervais is very lovely in the light of early 
afternoon, and the festoons of snow are like immense 
garlands of the edelweiss—the inaccessible flower of 
the Alps. The shadows creeping up to the line of 
white are of a deeper rose than the walls of rock, and 
they hold hints of the hues of the evergreens they en- 
fold. Below this overwhelming grandeur of form and 
color nestle the peaceful villages, red-roofed and em-_ 
bedded in green. The picture shows a fine rhythm 
of lines in parallels. 


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Number 22 TBOATS OFITSHOREY 


A color harmony of keen and plangent hues. Reds, 
blues and greens along the sides of the ships. Old 
rose and warm grays in the spreading sails. Rose 
and Itahan pink in the houses of the shore line. 
Broken reflections of all these kaleidoscopic colors 
m the light green waters of the bay. A delicate re- 
petition of them in the cloud-barrage of the sky. An 
mtriguing canvas. 


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ws eee 
Sopa aes 


Number 23 “THE GREAT WHitr a 2s 


This magnificent study of Mont Blane was win- 
ner of an honorable mention in the Paris Salon of 
1923—in a competition that held 7000 paintings. 
many of them from the brushes of the world’s master 
artists. The towering peak is shown in all its stu- 
pendous weight and overwhelming volume in brush- 
work that has the decision and authority of a model- 
ing tool, so competent is this painter when he deals 
with form. And the color is as compelling as its 
form—in fact, it dwells in the form, permeates it. 


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Number 24 HE WALERAFRON 


Once again the painter brings us to the colorful 
harbor of Sotto Marino. The rudders of the pic- 
turesque cargo boats are like the weapons of the vik- 
ings—or Gargantuan tomahawhs. The painter’s 
brushwork is luscious, and he has given an almost 
fruity bloom and flavor to the color in hull and sail, 
in sky and water, in house and quay. 


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Number 25 “FISHERMEN OF CONCARNEAU™ 


Sails, reddish and alight tan in color, make rich 
splotches of warm color against the cooler tones of 
the blue sky and the blue-green water of the bay at 
picturesque Concarneau. Place before these a group 
of sturdy seafarers in jackets of bright red and blue, 
and breeches of the same primary colors, on a quay 
whose tiles show like a mosaic, and you have a scheme 
that sings to the eye ina resonant harmony. The fish- 
ermen of Concarneau, being French, may have ap- 
preciated the artist’s delight when he painted them. 


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Number 26 ONVGoe eh ELGH LS. 


Precipitous slopes are the dominating features 
of this canvas. Shadowed by the morning sun the 
ruggedness is revealed by lights that mantle the over- 
lying snow and glaciers. Pierced by the spire-lke 
peak that cleaves the snow and towers far into the 
pale turquoise sky. The foreground is covered with 
new spring grass over which we wander past the 
mountaineers’ hut into the shadowed crevices of these 
Alpine monarchs. 


forty-three Pe yn 





Number 27 “FISHERMEN S HOLT 


““Home is the sailor, home from the sea.’ Even 
his ships, whose sails are drying in the sun, display 
a sort of Sabbath quietude, and their halls rest side 
by side in orderly array. Yet the Breton color is as 
lively as ever—there is no subduing that. The fish- 
mg boats remain green and pink, even on holidays, 
the bay becomes bluer than before, and the village, in 
its smiling repose, retains all its delicious tones of 
tawny reds and yellows. The fishermen are holding 
a pictorial holiday, and we and the artist are duly 
grateful. 


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Number 28 -LHESMONT BLANG RANGE” 


The three mountains that you see on the road to 
Chamonix, their parallel ridges meeting and oppos- 
ing in the foreground. The sky, faintly blue, enfolds 
the gray-pink of the central peak. Pines group 
themselves on the lower slopes of the conquering 
three peaks, and all three are crowned with snow. 
The artist has attained to a bigness of effect that yet 
holds a pastoral charm and quietude. The solidity 
of the painting gives a fine feeling of quality. 


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Number 29 “SAILS OF CHIOGGIA” 


Twenty miles south of Venice hes Chioggia, the 
largest of the fishing towns of Italy, and also one of 
the most picturesque. Payne was enchanted by this 
string of boats at the quay, their sails hoisted to the 
light breeze that they might become dry for the neat 
trip into the Mediterranean—sails of a grayish-red 
and a dull yellow above boats painted green and red 
—surely the keenest notes of color a painter could 
wish. 


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Number 30 “PEAKS JOR ON NA ve 


Lake Tonnay, in color a cold blue with an inter- 
play of green, is at Montrieux, near Geneva, and its 
peaks have all the sublime majesty of the snowy 
peaks of our High Sierras. Along the deep dechv- 
ities of these noble mountains the snow glows, vu the 
morning light, in tender pinkish grays against 
shadows as coldly blue and green as Lake Tonnay it- 
self. The more luxurious greens of the pines around 
the lake carry out the color harmonies of an un- 
usually impressive composition. 


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Number 31 . “SUNLAT Pram 


Wellhorn, near Meirengen, in the Swiss Alps. 
The artist made a laborious chmb of 2000 feet to 
pant this imposing picture, for Wellhorn held for 
him an allure not to be resisted at any cost. But no 
mountain climber ever came back with richer reward 
than this canvas—and now the painter hands vt on to 
us. In sunlight the snow gleams clear and jewel-like 
against the densely and intensely blue shadows. The 
valley below, too, is equally vivid—green grass and 
blue stream, the pines shadowed with blue. 


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Number 32 POA OPIVOUARNENE Zs 


The syllables of Dowarnenez are as softly mus- 
ical as the murmurous ripples of its peaceful, sunlit 
harbor. No Breton port offers more pictures to the 
trained eye and facile brush. Payne has brought us 
many from there, among them this colorful study of 
fishing smacks at anchor, delicious in its harmonies 
of greens, blues and rose-pinks, hues melting into one 
another and repeated softly in the rippled water on 
which the boats are riding so tranquilly. 


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Number 33 "A BUS sO hee 


The port of Sotto Marino seems to hold all the 
color of Italy, if we may judge from this canvas from 
Payne’s brush. But it also combines its lovely reds 
and yellows and greens im decorative patterns, 
making pictures for the painter’s eye on every hand. 
Here Payne has caught one of these pictures, trans- 
ferring it to canvas with a power and a directness, as 
well as with an unerring instinct for essentials, that 
makes this decorative canvas take rank with one of 
Brangwyn’s very best in both color and brushwork. 
High praise, but not misplaced. 


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Number 34 SEASE AV IND 


This fleet of advancing cargo, sardine and mack- 
erel boats has something of the conquering air of a 
flotilla of viking ships. And they are equally pic- 
turesque, for the fishermen of Italy have an eye for 
beauty no less competent than their hand for utility. 
We may surmise that they invented the color known 
as Itahan pink, so gloriously does it show itself im 
the sails of these boats. The white foam whispers 
and murmurs to the proudly lifted prows. The 
breeze sings. The color of ships and sea and sky is 
richly harmonized. A spontaneous piece of painting 
that gives great joy to the beholder—as it must have 
done to the artist. 


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Number 35 “WOODED SAEOPES- 


Wellhorn. A highly sensitized touch gives great 
distinction to this painting, one of the most beautiful 
mm Payne’s collection. The mountain forms have 
subtle rhythms, the color has crystalline clarity and 
subtlety—it “‘hangs together’ with the delicacy of 
the brushwork. But we are shown strength as well as 
refinement, intellect has gone hand in hand with emo- 
tion in the making of the picture. 


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Number 35 SOELWARD: BOUND” 


The mackerel hunters are nosing their way out 
of the harbor at Concarneau on a tide whose deep 
blue gleams like a harbinger of good luck. The at- 
ternoon sun, too, shines bright on the red and white 
sails, and the advancing breeze is preparing to pour 
utself into them. Kvery boat in the fleet is here, 
headed straight to sea, for the mackerel are runing 
at full speed a mile away. A picture of joyous and 
hopeful activity, a true transcript from lfe that is 
also a fine piece of art in its carefully studied ar- 
rangement. 


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Number 37 “SAND BOATS: 


The romance of ancient Italy is revealed in this 
conception. Stalwart Latins are unloading their 
cargo of sand that may have come from Corsica or 
the nearby Ligurian Coast. Drooping sails with tall 
pointed spars remind us of their ancient forbears, 
the barges of the Pharaohs that phed the Nile when 
the world was young. 


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Nu mober 38 <BERCALMED?” 


Four fishing boats off the coast of Brittany, 
typical craft made use of by these sturdy toilers of 
the sea. For the moment they are at rest. There is 
no breath of wind, and the lazily undulating waters, 
emerald im ther crystal clearness, hold the reflec- 
tion of rose colors from the sails of the boats, making 
them look like tender flowers of the sea. The com- 
position, triangular in its lines, is very effective. 


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Number 39 “ITALIAN BOATS ie aie 


The cargo craft of the Venetian lakes are no less 
picturesque and paintable than the gondolas of the 
lagoons—and, indeed, offer the artist more color and 
more variety of form. Payne’s flair for color led 
him to them again and again. In his No. 10 the sails, 
of the usual light red and dull yellow, offer form that 
is almost monumental in its reach toward the green- 
ish sky. The hulls of the boats are reflected im an in- 
terplay of greens and reds in the placid waters. Here 
is a color scheme that is at once rich, tender and 
luminous. 


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Number 40 SAVORS LOL Lo 


We are now among the French Alps, looking at 
mountains whose steep dechvities are gray-pink in 
light, blue in shadow. The subject has been handled 
with marked distinction, in brush strokes at once 
loose and direct. Snow lingers in the deep gorges of 
the mountamns. Below is a lovely green lake and 
trees rich in their changeless verdure. The sky, a 
bluish gray, reaches down toward the gray shadow 
on the higher peaks, which are almost hidden in the 
enveloping clouds. The blue shadows seem to float 
along the mountain sides, so evanescent are they, so 
fleeting in their beauty. 


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Number 41 “A BIG PINE Lake 


The necromancy of early morning light holds a 
fascination for the landscape painter that he cannot 
escape if he would. He vis forever trying to perform 
the same magic on canvas. Sometimes he succeeds. 
Payne’s success with “‘A Big Pine Lake,’ whose 
delicately resonant theme was found in the High 
Sierras, is amazing. Here is nature—here is hght— 
seen through atemperament. It is art of the highest. 
The mountain wall shows amethyst of a crystal clar- 
ity. The lower cliffs to the right are gray-pink with 
sunlight. The vivid green of trees and grass gives 
the entire canvas a sparkle of light. 


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Number 42 TPISHERMENS HARBOR” 


At Concarneau, along the Breton coast. Another 
example of Payne’s happy use of French fishing 
boats in the making of a thoroughly satisfactory pic- 
ture—a picture whose luscious color harmonies keep 
time, as it were, with the rhythms of its lines. Clear 
sunlight transfigures and glorifies the green and 
white of the boats, the green of the harbor ripples, 
and the yellow sails of the boats. The parallel lines 
of the composition give dignity as well as grace to 
the picture. 


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Number 43 “FRENCH BOAT S< 


Three tuna boats are lying at anchor in the 
harbor of Concarneau. In the foreground is a 
sardine smack. They are rasing her brown and 
patched sails making ready for the open sea. 
Nothing is here, save the weathered rigging, to sug- 
gest the drenching rain and stormy seas which are 
the lot of these Breton craft and their sturdy sailors ; 
a canvas with a vestful and pleasing arrangement of 
joyous color. 


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Number 44 SETS HINGE EE. 


The sardine boats are off for the fishing grounds. 
Their sails are set to catch all of the breeze that 
promises an early arrival. The warm afternoon sun 
accents the brown and orange sheets, their colors re- 
flect and sparkle in a sea of inky blue. The air of 
expectant activity indicates a bountiful catch and a 
speedy return. A canvas full of color, action and 
skillful brushwork. 


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Number 45 “PEAKS AND SHADOWS” 


Prize winner in the exhibition of the Cahfornia 
Art Club last fall. Painted near Kanderstag, in 
Switzerland, in the first year of Payne’s European 
sojourn, tt holds all the enthusiasm of the discoverer 
of magnificence in form. Its strength is almost 
overpowering—for it is hke the strength, the weight, 
the volume of the peaks themselves. The snow hes 
warm in the light, and the foreground shadows, rich 
with evergreens, shows a deep blue. The sunlit crags 
glow with broken color, and the entire scheme is one 
of much beauty. | 


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Number 46 “BRITTANY “BOATS~ 


Our artist lingered long and often round the 
harbor at Concarneau—and no wonder! To right 
and left, before him and behind him, lay the ingred- 
vents of mnumerable pictures in a smiling repose. 
The blue bay, gleaming like a mirror—the fluttering 
sails of light reds, yellows and greens—the brightly 
painted hulls of the boats—the protecting sky. All 
he had to do was to arrange them into a charming 
picture and call it “‘ Brittany Boats’’—which he did, 
and with most marked success on this occasion. 


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Number 47 “EVENING” 


Two fishing boats at Dowarnenez, on the coast of 
Brittany. The hull of one dull blue and red, the hul: 
of the other red and gray-pink. Raised sails show- 
mg dull reds, yellows and pinks. These make the 
simple ingredients of this charming picture, but 
they arrange themselves with such suavity, and they 
linn themselves against a pinkish sky with such 
sureness of effect, that no man could ask for more. 
Here is the artistic “‘enough”’ that is as good as a 
feast—indeed. it is a finely flavored feast to the 
palate of the initiated. 


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Number 48 “VIEW AT MURREN” 


These peaks are the loveliest in the Bernese Alps, 
and they have been discovered and here revealed in 
one of their most brilliantly colorful phases. The 
chinbing evergreens are lke an insurgent army with 
fixed bayonets. Seen im shadow, they wear the in- 
tense blue of lapis-lazuli, dazzingly beautiful. The 
emerging mountan peaks and ridges show a warm 
golden pink in the afternoon light, the sky above 
them a vibrant blue. The whole scheme of form and 
color has power and impressiveness—and it is full of 
beauty. 


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Number 49 “THE RETURN” 


Flere the oncoming fleet reminds us of a gen- 
eral marshalling his forces in review. A proud state- 
ly ship leads the way flanked by the fishing smacks 
with their sea-wings spread to the breeze. The blue- 
green sea sparkles with color as if dipped with the 
bright-hued sheets of this caravan of the sea. 


DeA Yon Stat y-six 





Number 50 “MAKING PORT 


Two fishing boats running side by side in a 
spanking breeze over waters deeply and darkly blue. 
The sails of the twin boats glow softly in the colors of 
fading roses and daffodils, and one is blazoned with 
the vwutials of its owner, F.C. The waves in the wake 
of the boats are aplay with broken beryl and emerald 
colors. White foam murmurs and whispers at their 
prows. fereis a picture, and a most beautiful one, 
that fairly sings to the eyes, chanting the joys of the 
open sea. And it is as vital as rt is beautiful, a de- 
lightfully spontaneous expression of the painter’s 
joy in his subject. 


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Number 51 “MODEL OF FRENCH TUNA ei 


An exact miniature duplicate of the tuna boats 
of the west coast of France. From the keel to the 
peak of the main mast every detail is a working part 
and the entire model is constructed neither as a dec- 
oration nor a toy, but is a precise reduction of an 
actuahty. 


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